The GRE PowerPrep Software Is Horrible

The other day I helped a client install the PowerPrep software for the GRE test.

It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

If you’re not familiar with the term, the GRE is the Graduate Record Examination, and if you want to go to graduate school in the US (or pretty much anywhere else) you have to take the GRE. I took the GRE many years ago, back in the heydey of Windows XP, and even back then the free GRE practice software, an application called PowerPrep, was ancient – this clunky thing with all the grace and finesse of a Windows 3.1 application.

So when I helped the client, I saw that the GRE website now offered PowerPrep II, not the original clunky PowerPrep I. An upgrade! Awesome!

Except the upgrade is actually much worse than the original. It’s an HTML file, running off some creaky Javascript files – the finest web design 2001 has to offer. Even worse, it requires an ActiveX control to run properly. That means it won’t run on Macs, which are currently the most popular laptop model among students. And it won’t install properly on the 64-bit version of Windows 7 without some tinkering.

I believe the GRE currently costs $135 to take, and according to Wikipedia (always a suspect source), around 675,000 students take it annually. Which means the test brings in about 91 million dollars annually. Apparently none of that can be spent to develop a better test practice application.

But I suppose that would cut into the lucrative test prep book market.

-JM